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DarkRoom/docs/gestures.md
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dtourolleandClaude Opus 5 8510a2f6a7 Give the selection one bar instead of two ends of the window
"What can I do with these twelve photographs?" was answered in two
places. Six buttons in the header — Add to collection, Keywords,
Presets, Paste to N, Export N, Remove from collection — and four more
on the floating bar at the foot of the grid, beside the count that
says what they would act on.

The header half was the worse of the two. Those six appeared and
disappeared from the middle of the row as photographs were picked, so
Sync, Settings and everything beside them slid several hundred pixels
sideways at the exact moment a hand was already travelling toward one.
On a tablet the header scrolls sideways, so they were often not on
screen at all.

All six move to the bar. It now reads left to right as shaping the
selection — Clear, Select all, Select to… — then acting on it, with a
gap between the two thoughts. The header keeps only what belongs to
the library, and changes only when the library does.

Two consequences worth stating. The bar holds ten controls in the
worst case, so it scrolls sideways like every other row in this view,
for the reason set out on the header's Flickable: a layout given less
width than its children need overruns rather than shrinking, and the
buttons past the edge are simply gone. And the bar now stays up for a
running export whatever the selection has since become, because Cancel
export lived on a button that used to have its own `|| exporting`
escape hatch — the grid's viewport inset follows the same condition so
the last row of thumbnails is never trapped underneath.

`settings-summary` went with them: threaded from the window into the
grid and into HeaderActions, and never once drawn.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-30 13:13:11 +02:00

6.1 KiB

How the application is driven

Every entry here is extracted from the comment beside the code that implements it, so this file cannot describe a gesture the application does not have. Add one by writing a GESTURE: block next to the implementation; there is nowhere else to write it.

15 gestures, in 2 places.

People

Pull a face out of the wrong person

  • Touch — Tap the faces that do not belong, then "Split off"
  • Pointer — Click the faces that do not belong, then "Split off"

Grouping over-merges on siblings, on parents and children, and on the same person a decade apart, so splitting is as prominent as merging. A tool that can only merge makes its own errors permanent.

ui/dr-ui/ui/identity.slint:130

Rule on a suggested face

  • Touch — Tick to confirm it, cross to reject it
  • Pointer — Tick to confirm it, cross to reject it

A face is either the system's guess or the user's judgement, and the two are never conflated. A rejection is remembered, so the face is not suggested for that person again.

ui/dr-ui/ui/identity.slint:150

See a person's photographs

  • Touch — Choose them in the rail, then "Show photos"
  • Pointer — Choose them in the rail, then "Show photos"

This is the point of having identified anybody. Without it the screen is a filing cabinet with no drawer handles.

ui/dr-ui/ui/identity.slint:545

Change how faces are grouped

  • Touch — "Grouping…", move the dials, then Regroup
  • Pointer — "Grouping…", move the dials, then Regroup

The right match confidence is a property of your library, not of the model. "What would this do?" answers for this library without writing anything; names, confirmations and the groups you have set aside are kept whatever the dials say.

ui/dr-ui/ui/identity.slint:582

Library grid

Start selecting several photographs

  • Touch — Press and hold a photograph, or press Select in the header
  • Pointer — Ctrl-click, or press Select in the header

Touch has no ctrl, so without a mode there is no way to select a second photograph — the first tap would open it. The hold is the fast way in and the button is the one that can be found.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:1172

Add or remove one photograph

  • Touch — While selecting, tap it
  • Pointer — Ctrl-click it

While selecting, a tap never opens. That is the whole point of the mode: one meaning per gesture at a time. Press Done to get tap-to-open back.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:1181

Leave selecting

  • Touch — Press Done in the header
  • Pointer — Press Done in the header
  • Keyboard — Escape

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:1189

Select a range

  • Touch — While selecting, press "Select to…", then tap the last photograph of the run
  • Pointer — Shift-click the last photograph of the run

This replaced a double tap, which had no visible state and could take forty photographs by accident. The run is resolved by the catalog rather than by what is on screen, so the grid can scroll between the two taps — the ranges that hurt on a tablet are longer than a screenful, which is exactly where a finger sweep runs out.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:1250

Find photographs with two people in them

  • Touch — Open the People chip on the filter bar, tap each name, then switch the chip beside them to "all of them"
  • Pointer — Open the People chip on the filter bar, click each name, then switch the chip beside them to "all of them"

"Any of them" is a union and "all of them" is an intersection. The tray is where both terms and the choice between them live, because a filter belongs on the filter bar.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:1936

Resize the thumbnails

  • Touch — Pinch the grid with two fingers
  • Pointer — Ctrl and the scroll wheel

There is no wheel on a tablet, so without the pinch the cell size could only be changed by a control a finger cannot reach.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:2562

File photographs in a collection

  • Touch — Drag a photograph — or a whole selection — onto a collection in the sidebar. Starting a drag stops the press becoming a hold, so it cannot leave you in selection mode.
  • Pointer — Drag a photograph — or a whole selection — onto a collection in the sidebar

The selection is what the drag carries, which is why selecting several is worth the mode: forty photographs file in one gesture.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:2725

Open a photograph

  • Touch — Tap it — a single tap, any length
  • Pointer — Click it

A tap opens; a tap that moved does not. Travel is what separates a deliberate tap from a hand brushing past, and it is the only thing that does: the two are the same length. An earlier version required the finger to dwell 120 ms instead, and that rejected ordinary taps — a real tap is often quicker than a brush.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:2980

Rate a photograph without opening it

  • Touch — Tap a star on the cell
  • Pointer — Hover the cell, then click a star
  • Keyboard — 0 to 5 on the selection

A star has to take the press without it also reaching the cell, or every rating throws the user into develop.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:3092

Drop the selection but keep selecting

  • Touch — Press Clear in the selection strip
  • Pointer — Press Clear in the selection strip

Distinct from Done, which leaves the mode entirely. Clearing keeps it, so the next selection can start straight away.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:3713

Select everything the grid is showing

  • Touch — While selecting, press "Select all"
  • Pointer — While selecting, press "Select all"

A scoped grid of two hundred frames is two hundred taps otherwise, and "all of them, except those three" is a far more common shape than the taps it took to say it.

ui/dr-ui/ui/library.slint:3730